Hoggie the Hedgehog

Isn't he cute?!

This is not an original - it is from this website. Very quick to piece together. I think my friend who is a bit of a hedgehog fanatic will be appreciative of this little toy for her baby when it arrives early next year.

I think my Hoggie's prickles are a bit denser than the pattern as I ended up cutting another long row of prickle fleece. Perfect for little baby fingers to grab and explore.  I also added a little jingle bell inside the stuffing for extra sensory fun!

Bungle Jungle Quilt - Red and Yellow Block

All there is for the Red and Yellow block is a finished shot - I was short on time and just wanted to whip this one out, so no pictures along the way.

I used the same technique for this block as for the Green and Navy Block - strips rather than blocks.

It is all beginning to come together....I just hope the finished product is going to work after the mistake I may have made....

I went searching for the background fabric last weekend, and really wasn't finding anything I liked. I had in my head that a charcoalish grey would work, but none of the greys were dark enough from the quilting cotton section. And then I found what I thought was a perfect grey in the Broadcloth section, so after a bit more umming and ahhing that is what I bought. It wasn't until I checked the receipt on my way out that I realised I had gone and bought cotton drill! Ooops. Wasn't sure if drill was acceptable for a quilt - & an internet search didn't really help. But I figure quilts in the past were made with whatever people cold find, & surely that meant fabrics would have been different weights at times?

The drill definitely is a bit heavier than the quilting fabric, and one side of has a definite diagonal weave, so if the fabric is cut and then re-oriented 90 degrees you can notice a different sheen (see pic), but the flip side doesn't have this weave line, so I think it will be ok if I make sure that is the 'right' side throughout. The plan for the finished quilt is to have a reasonable amount of quilting too, so I think any difference in fabric weight shouldn't matter once I've quilted it all together. Here's hoping anyway!

cut out background fabric - different sheen noticeable dependent on fabric orientation

Bungle Jungle Quilt outline
Red and Grey Block
Green and Navy Block
Aqua and Navy Block

Bungle Jungle Quilt - Aqua & Navy Blocks

There will be 2 blocks from the aqua & navy print fabrics, one big & one smaller rectangle.

The larger Aqua & Navy block is essentially made the same way I put together the Red & Grey Block.

After cutting strips from the selected prints - an assortment of aqua, navy & some white prints for contrast  - I joined these into groups of 3 strips sewn down the long edge:    

... I then randomly cut each of these into 3 or 4 strips of different widths:

..and joined these together into mini 3x3 blocks:

Some of the mini blocks needed an extra row to increase their size so that I would end up with a block as big as I wanted, so that was added where needed...

 ...and then I joined these 'mini blocks' into one big block:

 And then squared it up (or 'rectangled' it up in this instance) to finish:

I also made a smaller rectangle aqua & navy block using some of the left over strips, as well as some longer pieces of the same fabrics:

Bungle Jungle Quilt outline
Red and Grey Block
Green and Navy Block
Red and Yellow Block

Felt Weekly Activity or Routine Planner

Little Imp often asks in the morning, 'where am I going today'. Fair question given she spends her week days between mother-in-law, Daycare, Nanny or home with mum or dad, and then quite frequently we head away for the weekend to my parent's house.

I saw an in for creating a felt 'weekly activity planner'. Something Little Imp could use herself to look at and know the plan for the day.

My idea was 2 inch felt squares as a base, embellished with different symbols to represent the many places Little Imp might go in a week, as well as some of the more frequent activities she's involved in..  I wasn't sure initially if I would attach magnets to these and set the planner up on the fridge, or make a felt board to place in her room.

Here are some of the finished squares. Little Imp helped work out what some of the symbols should be and "assisted" with the gluing. The symbols ended up being made out of a combination of felt, glitter shapes, colored craft foam, scrap booking cut outs and fabric.

 

We live at number 7 - so these are for days at home

The days of the week were machine stitched onto felt.

I did try the magnet idea, but decided against it for a few reasons, so in the end I just cut a rectangle of felt for the backing, turned over about 5cm along the top edge and hand stitched this down. This created a space to thread a heavy piece of card into. I then clipped 2 holes along the top fold & inserted a small bulldog clip to clasp the card & create a loop for hanging.on the back of Little Imp's bedroom door.

After a few week's of use the only addition we've made is to add an arrow that we can move to point to which day 'today' actually is. The concept of today/tomorrow/yesterday is still a bit confusing to a Little Imp!
 

Bungle Jungle Quilt - Red and Grey Block

Here is the next block towards making up the Bungle Jungle Floating Block Quilt for a new cousin...

 This block uses a slightly different technique from my Green & Navy Block, based (at least to start with) on Alyssa Haight Carlton's Improvisational Piecing Block of the Month. 

Red and grey improvisational pieced block

This is roughly what I did...

Just like the green & navy block, cut strips approx 2.5-2.75 inches wide off each layer cake square.

Join 3 strips together along the long edge. Here is one of the combinations I played around with ... if you do have double ups of fabric try to make sure they are in a different position in the rows (i.e. the grey /coloured spot fabric is on the outside in 2 of these combinations - would be better to have one in the middle). This just makes it easier to get more even/pleasing fabric combinations later on when you cut and re-join pieces together.

So, stitch the sets of 3 strips together....

And then wonky cut these into about 4 strips each of different widths:

Then join 3 of these little strips to make up a 3x3 mini block, and then another 3 to make another mini block..and so on, until you have 4 mini blocks. These might all be of slightly different sizes. Because I wanted a whole crocodile in the quilt I made the final block up a bit differently as you can see in the picture.

Once the 4 mini blocks are sewn up then sew 2 of these together, and then the other 2 together to end up with 2 bigger rectangles.

the 4 'mini-blocks', with the left side showing 2 of these already sewn together. 

Finally, sew the 2 rectangles together to form the final rough edged block. Later on it will get squared up, but I'm just leaving it rough around the edges for the moment.

Final 'rough' block

I'm not so sure that I like how definite this final seam joining the 2 rectangles appears compared to all the other slightly wonky lines. I've decided not to unpick just yet though, & will wait to see if I still notice it once all the other blocks are finished.

Later...
I added a row across one edge of the block - both because I wanted it a bit bigger in the end, but also, by adding this across the edge I also visually broke up the seam line I was worried about looking too 'straight'.

adding an extra row to the red and grey block

So now I have a Green & Navy Block 

& this Red & Grey Block.

Time to create the Yellow & Red....and Aqua Blocks....

Bungle Jungle Green and Navy Block

Here goes the first strip block.

Green and Navy strip block

This is roughly what I did...

Cut a strip approx 2.5-2.75 inches wide off each layer cake square. I used a quilting ruler and mat to make sure I was getting this approximate width, but then purposefully cut the line a bit wonky alongside the ruler edge.

ruler used as a guide for width, but not to actually cut the fabric

cut fabric showing wonky-ness of the cut

 I cut 7 different fabric strips from a selection of the green fabrics with some navy and white fabrics thrown in for highlights and contrast.

cut strips overlaid to give an idea of how they will look together

The next step was to roughly cut each strip into 3 or 4 smaller rectangles, and then begin playing around to get a layout of about 5 lines to start with. This layout seemed to work as a starting point. Don't forget that once sewn the overall size will be quite a bit smaller given the number of seams.

layout before sewing strips together

Get out the sewing machine and sew the small rectangles together to form 5 strips. I still used a 1/4inch seam, but again, not too fussed if the sewn line was a little wonky or if angles weren't straight - this is what I wanted, improvising! Then press seams.

little rectangles sewn together into 5 strips

Lay out the strips on a cutting mat (not pictured) to recheck if you need to add more rectangles to each strip, or more strips to get the finished block size you are after.
I was happy with what I had, but had some skinny bits of fabrics so pieced together & added a skinny line 3 rows down.  Then the next step was to sew each strip to the next and press. Again, I purposefully stitched these rows together on a bit of an angle and with a bit of 'wonk'.

Later...After sewing up the other coloured blocks (that I will blog about later) & beginning to play around with an overall design for the quilt I decided to add another strip.

Don't do the next step until you have finished all your floating blocks & have worked out the sizes you want for each block. This picture shows measuring and lining up the quilting ruler to square up the final block.

Bungle Jungle .. A new quilt

A new quilt!

A baby cousin for Little Imp is on the way, so there is a need for a quilt to be made.

I bought a Layer Cake, Moda Bungle Jungle, a little while back when my brother was in the US & I didn’t have to pay postage and now I get to slice and sew. Very exciting. (In case you don't know a 'layer cake' is a selection of forty 10 inch fabric squares from a single fabric collection)

Hours were spent considering different patterns until I came back to a floating block design. The tricky part with the Bungle Jungle fabric was still wanting to include some sort of Game of Same option and also keep the animals in the animal prints relatively whole so they can be recognizable, kind of like an ‘eye spy’ quilt.

The initial pattern plan is this…no doubt it will change a bit as I go, but a bit of a mud map to go by.

I divided the fabrics into four different sets of colours

aqua and navy

green with navy highlights

yellow and red

 And grey and red.

There are also squares of animal prints in each of the different colours that look something like this:

I didn't take any pics of these animal prints before I started fussy cutting these out to make what will become a bit of a matching game. Not quite the game of 'exactly the same' but a game of 'kind of the same'! Matching the same animals but with different background colours ... the downside of only having a 10inch square of each piece of fabric. You can see some of the pairs I began cutting out to start with here.

Still not sure how I am going to use the large animal print square in the quilt...time will tell....